


Love in the Time of the Reaping

by Mirabai0821



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Alternate Universe - Zombie Apocalypse, Black Male Character, Blood and Gore, F/M, Female Character of Color, Kirkwall (Dragon Age), M/M, Major Character Injury, Multi, mentions of animal abuse, mentions of cannibalism
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-03-04
Updated: 2016-04-12
Packaged: 2018-05-24 18:39:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 12
Words: 7,503
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6162891
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mirabai0821/pseuds/Mirabai0821
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>So many died that first month. So many scores of people. And Fen’harel was not discriminating in his tastes for blood, he took them all. Young and old, healthy and infirm alike. He took them all.</p><p>He took her family tree, roots and branches and leaves until there was nothing but two little fruits left.</p><p>Her and her brother Alphonse.</p><p>She will not let the Reapers take him.</p><p>A survival story.<br/>A love story.<br/>A tale of Hope and Sin.</p><p>THE ZOMBIE AU NOBODY ASKED FOR!!!</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

So many died that first month. So many scores of people. And Fen’harel was not discriminating in his tastes for blood, he took them _all._ Young and old, healthy and infirm alike. He took them _all._

He took her family tree, roots and branches and leaves until there was nothing but two little fruits left, her and her brother Alphonse.

Alphy thought it was a sign from the Maker that they had been spared but Evelyn knew better, they weren’t spared they were _forgotten,_ and the Maker would soon be back to take what he wanted.

But as she lived and breathed she would ensure that Alphy would too. Maker wasn’t coming for them today.

Or tomorrow.

And she would stave off His reaping for as long as she could.

Go west. They said, those disparate _theys_ barely clinging by fingernails to the last shreds of life.

Go west to Kirkwall, the last city alive.

She packed her bow and her brother and her hound.

And headed west.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> These will not be long chapters FYI.


	2. Chapter 2

Magister’s Ancient called Kirkwall the City of Chains, and it was. Chains snaked out from beyond the city walls and roped themselves around the neck of people’s hope and _pulled_ , dragging them along like obedient dogs. Chains cracked whips at hope’s back, driving the people ever forward, funneling them along the narrow chute of land between the Vimmark Mountains and the sea, to where salvation stood bright and shining and beautiful.

And barred to all.

Kirkwall’s chains pulled people’s hope until it strangled, snuffed out at high walls and locked gates.

From the Viscount’s tower, Knight Commander Meredith gestured toward the shanty town with the tip of her sword. The hiss of metal against metal set her Knight-Captain’s teeth on edge, _everything_ about Meredith set Cullen Rutherford’s teeth on edge. But he preferred to keep said teeth within his mouth to chew whatever scraps of food were left within the city so he kept his mouth shut.

“Look at them, scrabbling around our city like rats to capsize a sinking ship.”

“Can you blame them Meredith?” Grand Enchanter Orsino’s voice was very much like his face, weary worn and dark. “They come here looking for help, for safety, only to find neither. Open the gates, we have room, you can let them in.”

His plea fell on the city’s Viscount’s fear deafened ears, while the City’s Champion stood to the side, removed, as thought the apostate was waiting for the right moment to offer her solution.

“Let them in?” Meredith shrieked, wheeling on Orsino as though the elf had uttered the foulest, most sacrilegious oath. “So they can bring that _disease_ in with them? To contaminate us all!”

“We don’t know that’s it’s a disease, Knight Commander, my mages are…”

“What else could it be but another blight! Sent to damn us all for our hubris and our _sins_!” Meredith turned her leering eyes towards her Knight-Captain who stiffened, chastened, even though he knew he’d done nothing wrong. It was a reminder, that all this was the Maker’s Punishment. That it was their duty as Templars to purge Sin from the city so that their Maker would turn His Face back upon them and save them from the reapers.

Orsino offered counterpoint that Cullen chose to ignore, ignoring too Meredith’s screeching defense that grated on his nerves and his heart and his conscious and most importantly the _headache_ that bloomed like a weed at the base of his skull. He was due for his dose, he hoped the meeting adjourned soon so they could travel back to the Gallows to get it.

“Do they always fight like this?” The Champion, Hawke, asked him. “Like some kind of perverse married couple?”

In spite of his pain, Cullen laughed, but kept its volume low. Even humor could be mistaken for Sin in Meredith’s eyes.

“I don’t know how you handle her.”

“Because she is what keeps us alive. You know this Champion.”

Hawke shook her head. “For how long?”

“You cannot be serious!” Orsino boomed, hands waving wild before pressing together in supplication. “You cannot be serious!?”

“I am. We let them into this city and we all die. We let them remain out there howling like wounded beasts and it acts as a beacon to draw those things toward us. If the greater number is to survive the lesser number must be sacrificed. Think of the children that sleep within these walls, Viscount. Think of your son. Champion, your friends and family. We must eliminate the softness of our hearts if we are to survive!”

“Whoa, woah, wait a blighted fucking minute. Meredith you’re talking about purging the shanty town!? Killing all those people?”

“Every minute we quibble about the _ethics_ is a minute death hastens to our shores.”

“You, who were just talking about sin a minute ago…” Hawke stepped forward, the fight building behind her eyes.

“It is no sin to defend our souls! Their taint,” The Knight Commander began.

“Meredith enough!”

“Twisted even the false-god, and the whisperer  
Awoke at last, in pain and horror, and led  
Them to wreak havoc upon all the nations of the world!”

“Enough!” The Viscount finally found volume for his voice. “Do what you must.”

“Thank you Viscount.” And Meredith had the nerve to bow as though she weren’t already completely bereft of humility.

 _Thank the Maker_ , Cullen thought, dry tongue beginning to move around in his mouth, drumming up moisture, preparing for the sweet cool draught of lyrium waiting for him back at the relative safety and peace of the Gallows.

“Knight-Captain!” His Commander barked, phantom fingers pulling at his chain and leash, drawing his hope tight around his neck,

“Take a contingent of Templars to the city gates and do the Maker’s Will.”

Until it choked.


	3. Chapter 3

Hope’s sharp knife cut the strings around her heart, severing the anchor and moorings in her chest until the organ slipped free, thudding along each rib as it tumbled down to rest somewhere dark and forgotten and empty. **  
**

Like her stomach.

Kirkwall, the City of Chains, chains that dragged them for miles and months from Ostwick, _here_ to where _they_ said they would be safe and fed and clean.

Hope guttered with the last bleeding gasp of her heart until it snuffed out. Cold.

Already the hunter planned, eyes scanning the wooden shacks and linen tents, looking for the weakest to pick off first. Hunters had no hope, no compassion, not even fear, driven only by pure instinct–it filled the hole in her chest like blood in the lungs.

(Like how that boy died at the end of her arrow’s flight because he thought ‘sorry’ was enough to pay for the food he stole.)

Next to her Alphonse stood 4 years, 6 inches, 50 pounds, and a _heart_ her senior– yet still dwarfed by her shadow and presence.

“BB the gates are closed.”

“I know.”

“How will we get in?”

She opened her arms, gesturing to the teeming filthy masses that milled about the shanty town. “We’re not supposed to.”

Alphonse squeezed his sister’s shoulder, and bent to scratch Cousland behind the ears. “We will. The Maker has us. We will be alright.”

**

She put off hunting for his sake, exhausting the very last of her _hope_ to find them food and shelter before she reverted to _sin_ to do the same.

They eyed her and her family of two. Promising dirty water and moth eaten shelter –what amounted to riches– for a hank off the mabari. Cousland, even after wasting away from a diet of grass, was still a walking buffet. Four people died in as many days trying to take him from her.

But on day five, when Alphonse couldn’t move from from his thin blanket strewn upon the mud. When she barely had the strength to sit and brood. On that day, Cousland laid his heavy head in her lap and whined as if to say, “If it is you, Mistress, it is alright.”

Hunters had no hope, no compassion, no attachments. As his deep brown, mud colored like their skin, as his red and weeping eyes gazed up at her in only loyal admiration, already she planned what she could get for his hindquarters.

She would turn his pelt into gloves. His bones into broth. His choicest bits would be offered to the guards at the gate. There was a rumor that meat inside the city was hard to come by.

Not so outside it.

Outside the gate meat was plentiful.

“We will be alright, Cousy.” She covered his eyes with one hand, he licked her palm but offered no other struggle.

From his cot Alphonse watched, tears in his eyes, murmuring Cousy’s favorite song for comfort.

 _They say the Maker sent him special,_  
Always loyal, without pride,  
So he could be the sworn companion  
Of the Maker’s Holy Bride.

The blade was sharp, kept so by many punctured skulls and severed heads–the only way to kill the reapers. Evelyn swallowed the moan in her throat and reminded herself it will be painless. 


	4. Chapter 4

“Wholesale murder isn’t your thing Knight Captain.”

Hawke and the headache dogged his steps, talons studded with bits of his patience and sanity.

“It doesn’t have to be this way.”

“I have an order.” He kept his words short to conserve his strength, there wasn’t enough in him to fight Hawke and his conscious and the people outside Meredith meant for him to kill.

“Knight Captain Rutherford! Don’t do this!”

His soldiers are soundless behind him save the clank and clang of metal armor, just as weary, just as thirsty as he was, their lyrium promised only after they drank their fill of blood. The high gate stood before them, the threshold between salvation and destitution. Fingernail marks were etched into the stone outside where the hopeful became hopeless, starving to death three feet of quarried stone from Templar cook-fires.

The wall guards were fed the best.

The Knight Captain couldn’t fault a person their hope. Couldn’t damn them either. Kirkwall really was the best place to go. Viscounts in ages past kept stores of grain and provisions buried throughout the city, magically sealed and magically preserved for the city’s many struggles against the the elves, the Almarri, Andraste Herself, Tevinter, Orlais, Darkspawn–ages of ceaseless conflict. Whoever got their hands on a rediscovered cache made a fiefdom from their home, dispensing priceless food like a god to which mortals flocked.

Meredith and her Templars controlled the largest caches and by extension the largest parts of the city, the Viscount falling under her ‘protection’ because ‘prisoner’ was too harsh a word.

The Champion controlled her her own stores of food, the Amell estate built on top of several of them. Her family of pirates, apostates, and exiled princes policed a section of the city carved from Hightown mansions and Lowtown slums.

The Elves held sway over the alienage and surrounding areas, exiling shemlen, oxmen, and dwarves.

The Carta held territory by the docks. The qunari built a city within a city, held by an Arishok who opened his gates to all who fell upon their knees for the Glory of the Qun.

Smaller gangs controlled buildings or a handfuls of blocks, ownership exchanging hands almost daily and always deadly. But by and large peace reigned, tenuous as it was, and still far preferable to the violent struggle outside the city walls.

Hope still lived here.

And Cullen could not fault a person their hope.

“If I do this,” He stretched, corrected the subtle hunch in his back, trying to grow larger than the confines of his armor. “Will you take them? Will you take responsibility for them?”

Hawke squared her shoulders like a bird flaring her wings. “Yes. Will you?”

Subverting an order didn’t mean death. Meredith needed bodies in armor to exert her will, she didn’t have the luxury to punish insubordination with death.

But.

Cullen licked his lips, knowing they’d go dry until her anger dried up.

“Yes.” He sighed, praying for the strength.


	5. Chapter 5

“Open the gate Lieutenant, let us through.” The Knight Captain called, head spiking with pain as his order was relayed through shouts that trailed up to the guard tower.

Slowly the stone creeped open, the chains groaned as they adjusted to new and unfamiliar configurations, these gates hadn’t been opened since the Veil came down.

Knight Captain Rutherford drew a line from the middle of his forehead to his heart, the symbol of Andraste’s pyre, asking for forgiveness when he saw the bones of the starved dead crumble inward with the opening gates.

“Maker fucking take you Meredith.” Hawke swore. “We had more than enough.”

“Do you really know that for sure Champion?” Cullen asked, already weary and he hadn’t yet raised his sword.

Hawke didn’t answer him, and in so doing, answered him.

“How do you wanna do this Templar? Wanna just start picking folks up carrying them inside? Will the men in the guard towers close the gates when they see we don’t mean to kill these poor bastards?”

“Wall soldiers are well fed and watered, so they follow orders unquestioningly. They shouldn’t move unless I say.”

Hawke shrugged as she walked past the iron and stone, stepping outside Kirkwall for the first time since...she right know when. “Good to know.”

He sent out his soldiers to spread the news: ‘Gather your things, your sick and weary, Kirkwall’s arms are open to you.’ The exodus to the gate started slowly, most already too weak to do more than queue and shuffle along past. They trickled in, stopping to bow or heap blessings on the man and woman who came to save them.

Then the newer arrivals, those who hadn’t been sapped from long months of destitute waiting, the ones freshest from the road with just enough strength left to still fight for food and shelter, they began to push and jostle their way forward.

Cullen’s soldiers kept order, but only barely, there seemed to be hundreds of them, hundreds more still waiting to be let inside.

“Keep up this pace and we’ll be at this ‘till nightfall.” Hawke gripped her staff, flexing her fingers open and closed around the wooden haft.

“I know.”

“So who’s gonna show up first?”

“With Maker’s luck, Meredith.”

The reapers came for you at all hours of the day, snatched you in morning’s light, devoured you whole at twilight. But at nighttime they were their strongest, most violent, and most active for reasons still unknown.

“Hurry it up templars! Move them along!”

But the people, templars and the refugees, no longer needed encouragement. From the back of the mass of humanity, tortured screams went up like beacons, low groaning moans sounding soon after when the screams cut out and died.

“Oh fuck!” Hawke swore.

“Maker’s Breath!”

The trickle of humanity dripping into Kirkwall suddenly surged into a flood. The barely healthy trampled the weak, waves of people crested and crashed against the half-open slit of the gates. Behind them, more people pushed and pushed, trapping those stuck in the middle. Twin cries came from the templars.

“Open the gates, let these people in!”

“Close the gates, before they get in!”

The chains began creaking, but in what direction neither Hawke nor Cullen could tell.

“Keep that gate open Templar!” Cullen shouted, pulling volume from some as yet untapped font of strength.

“We gotta buy them time Cullen, to get the people inside. Or we’ll all be trapped out here.” Magic crackled to life in the head of her staff, the image of Andraste wreathed in gold flames turned into actual flames.

Hawke charged forward, heading straight into the morass of people and reapers while Cullen seriously considered whether it was worth it to join her.

“Knight Captain,” A templar, Donaldson, huffed. The helmet on her head concealed all of her features save the terror filled whites of her eyes. “What do we do?”

He pyre’d himself again, consigning his soul to the Maker’s hands.

_Blessed are they who stand before_   
_The corrupt and the wicked and do not falter._   
_Blessed are the peacekeepers, the champions of the just._

“Get these people inside, as many as you can. Defend them as long as you can, but when it's over, close the gates and do not open them again.”


	6. Chapter 6

They were screaming, but when where the people not? Screams rang across the camp always, like Chantry bells tolling the hours, marking down times and manners of death. She learned to ignore them, had to, otherwise she’d never rest, not that she did very much of that now. **  
**

So she ignored the screaming, concentrating on the whimpering of her faithful hound as she pressed the blade to his ribs. Hands shaking from either not having eaten in days or from the reality that she needed to sacrifice her only friend to save her only family. Just a little more force and the deed would be done, Cousland encouraged it, sliding his body closer to the knife.

 _It’s okay_ , he whined in canine words. _I’ll be okay_.

The screaming built, layer upon layer of agony until it was right outside the drawn cloth of their tent. Cousland stopped whining and picked his head up and out of Evelyn’s lap, ears pricked and perked, a weak growl rattling in his throat like a rock dropped in a bottle.

She stood immediately, grateful the first time in her life for--

“Reapers! Alphy get up!”

Alphonse was slow, heard his sister’s words like they were being filtered through a glass pressed to a wall. Like how they used to spy on their brother Vaughn when he took a new prospective betrothed to his room and shut the door for ‘Private Conversation’. He tried to shrug off the maggot and moth eaten blanket, but his every move was slow, limbs operating on some kind of timed delay.

“Get up Alphonse! Move it!”

She dug under the pile of displaced dirt and rags, unearthing an ornate staff with lyrium veins etched up and down the body. Evelyn put her brother’s hands around the staff, making him use it like a crutch to keep him upright.

“BB, you told me not to!”

 _“Foul and corrupt are they, who have taken His gift, and turned it against His children! Maleficar! Maleficar!”_ They screamed as they tore one mage apart with their bare hands and lunged for her brother with intent to do the same. The Reaping, you see, was the Maker’s Punishment, for allowing maleficar to walk free among Good People.

As for what exactly defined a maleficar...they never found out. Evelyn and Cousland didn’t bother questioning corpses.

_“Never use your magic in public again, Alphy. Swear.”_

She stole the staff from a living corpse on one of their first days at Kirkwall’s gate. The woman was too weak with hunger and sickness to defend her weapon and Evelyn took it, easy, thinking that once inside the city it would fetch a nice price, making sure Alphy didn’t see her theft. Days later, she found him, praying over that same woman’s corpse. She barely noticed the sting of shame.

“I know what I said Alphonse! No choice now, use what you have to stay alive!”

The lyrium veins lit up like flaring torchlight in Alphy’s hands, the man standing straighter as the magic snaked into his body, like some kind of potion or stimulant temporarily infusing him with the strength to fight.

“BB! Behind you!”

Arrows were deadly, precious things that allowed her to kill Reapers from a distance, firing a shot between the eyes (or what remained of them) every time. Blades were close and clumsy, requiring precision strikes to the skull and neck, for only a severed head or pierced brain stopped the creatures.

Magic only seemed to slow them down.

A bolt of lightning seized the rotting muscles.

Fire charred them useless.

Ice froze them solid for killing blows that shattered them to pieces.

Yet Alphonse knew none of these skills, his tender spirit suited only for Creation magic and nothing else. And while he could mend a bone and stitch a cut, his magic couldn’t fill empty bellies, weakening greatly when his own belly remained empty.

So while he struggled to maintain a Barrier over himself and his sister, she slung arrows, and Cousland ripped away shuffling legs and grasping limbs, tore out throats so soft with rot that whole heads came away in his jaws.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I actually split this chapter in twain to keep them short like I want them. Next chapter will be fun. And C’mon y’all, did you really think I was gonna kill the dog?


	7. Chapter 7

They swarmed, not just reapers, living flesh too. They surged and filled the narrow alleys between huts and shacks like blood in veins pulsing in one direction– _away_. **  
**

“Alphy!” He slumped on his staff, the lyirum runes guttering out like a blown candle, the magic surrounding him, protecting him, faded and he crashed to the ground.

“Alphonse Allen Trevelyan GET UP!” She crushed her fist into a snapping jaw, while another reaper fell, literally fell on top of her, blown up by some magical gust of wind and deposited elsewhere for someone else to deal with or die by.

He huffed his answer, unheard above the screaming and shouting before falling still, head bent chin to chest like a man at prayer or rest.

Knowing Alphonse, it was both.

People tore past them, ignoring their struggles, blinded by the terror that chased them with low moans and shuffling feet. Some streaked by with pulped and bitten flesh, unaware or uncaring that there were now on borrowed time. One bite from a reaper, and your life ended. Either by the fever that burned you out, or by blood loss, or by your own hand at the realization of your fate. Within hours, provided your brain remained intact, you rose to reap the rest.

“Alphy please! Fight!”

The first reaper still snapped at her, even though its jaw hung dislocated from the bottom of its skull. The second reaper tangled up in her legs, trying to bite through her metal greaves, armor she took off her father’s corpse. She kicked to jar it loose, but its hands grasped and tore at the straps of her armor while her hands remained at the neck of her other assailant. She needed just a few inches of space to reach for her blade and drive it in its eye. But if she fell, toppled by the reaper trying to gnaw on her shin, she’d die.

More corpses shuffled towards them, reaching for the easier prey, Alphy still on his knees.

“Alphonse!”

Cousland barked, unsure of who to help, knowing whichever he saved damned the other. He whined as he blocked Alphonse from the claws that were moments away from shredding him to pieces, knowing Mistress would want this.

“Get him out of here Cousy! Go!”

The corpses attacking them rotted and fell to dust in a swirl of sinister purple smoke. The teeth on Evelyn’s legs fell out of disintegrating gums, and the arms reaching to bring her flesh into open mouth sloughed off like cooked meat from a bone. The bodies fell with a soft whuff, wafting the sickening smell of rot all around them. Cousland hacked and Evelyn, newly freed, doubled over to retch.

“Ah. I’m here to save you, fashionably late, but given the circumstances far preferable to never.”

He was a mage by the look of him, dripping in equal parts swagger and blood. He dipped to hook an arm under Alphonse and lifted him to his feet. “There now right as rain, a mite exhausted are we? No matter, I’ve got you.”

“Thank you.” Evelyn gasped between coughs.

“No time for gratitude. For now we must hurry, I’d hate to see all my work wasted.”

“And you are?”

“Dorian of House Pavus–or whatever is left of it. And now we must get to that gate!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It’s about to be a cameo fest in this fic I swear.


	8. Chapter 8

The reapers bit him, twice.

Once on forearm, his left, the bastard chomping hard enough on his metal vambraces to knock several teeth loose from soft, rotted gums. Knight Captain Rutherford kept punching with his right until the face of the creature caved in, skull hollowed out like a crushed pumpkin.

Later, minutes or hours or seconds, he couldn’t tell. The reapers blended together into one long abattoir of fetid flesh, moaning, and death. Later, another got him in the back, mindlessly chewing its way up his torso until it could bite the uncovered flesh of his neck. A helmet would save him but he didn’t wear one, having seen too many templars succumb to paranoia, wearing full armor at all times. They succumbed too, to the heat, cooking their brains in their skulls rather than potentially face a reaper unprotected. Those armored reapers were hard to kill, the armor that killed them in life protecting their soft heads in death from the swords or arrows that would stop them.

Cullen frantically swung his sword behind him like a scourge, the same way he saw the fanatics in Kirkwall do. The ones that walked about shirtless, screaming the Chant, striking their backs with knotted and spiked flails in penitence, convinced their self-castigation would save them.

He didn’t know if their faith was rewarded, but his was. The two halves of the reaper fell away on either side of him.

He felt phantom teeth on him, felt the bites welling with blood under his armor, convinced he could feel it trickle down the groove of his spine or drip into his gauntlets. He knew if he pulled off his breastplate, 5 layers of hammered and folded steel, there would be bites up and down the column of his back. He felt fever flare in his skin, assured somehow that this wasn’t the heat of battle but the heat of the sickness that would kill him.

Cullen knew he was a dead man and it drove him mad.

Utterly.

The sweat on his face was blood.

The grunts he made with every sword strike were moans.

The hunger in his gut… the driving impulse, the need, the ache, it sang to him and he knew…

That it was not for human flesh.

Crystal cold song broke the fever on him, Cullen cried out with a laugh or a cry, with a tortured shout of agony. The very thing that kept him alive was the very thing determined to kill him, later, slower, saner.

The lyrium.

He would die now or he would die later but assuredly he would die, screaming trapped either in a nightmare of blood or...a nightmare of blood.

Thus always to templars.

“Cullen!” Hawke cried. “Cullen the gate! The blighted fucking gate!”

Behind them, the great gates swung closed on pulled chains, even as people attempted to pass through the barely open and quickly closing corridor of stone. The shrieking peaked, louder than before, desperate cries of “Wait!” and “Stop!” echoing above the moans of dying and the already dead.

More tried to shimmy through to safety, overburdened with their possessions, they got stuck, wedged in gates.

Then crushed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This will not be cute. (It will but more often than not, it won’t). Yes there will be a love story (more than one in fact). But people are going to die horribly. This is full on horrors of survival kind of stuff. Did you read The Battle of Yonkers in World War Z? Yeah? This is that. If you were expecting a romance with a little bit of angst on the side: Abandon Hope all Ye Who Enter Here. This is not that kind of story.


	9. Chapter 9

Even lyrium couldn't compel his limbs to rise. No point. He instructed his men to close the gate and to let no more through. An easy order to follow. 

Hawke wilted, the plummet of her hope visible on her face before it twisted into a snarl as more reapers attacked. 

“Cullen! We need to get to the gate, they'll open it again. For you, they'll open it. Cullen!”

He heard, he ignored, still listening for the sound of crunching bones as the gate slammed closed. What did that feel like? Not the violent press of the stone, but the frantic exuberant hope that must have been there moments before. Whoever that poor soul was they probably died within finger lengths of lovers or friends reaching to pull them free.

“Almost there Tabris! Just a little further.”

They died for hope, within inches of it. And here he was so far from _any_ hope at all. So what was the point in fighting for it.

“Cullen! Knight Captain! Knight Captain!”

The body slammed into him. He lost his footing and fell with the reaper into the dry dust. The reaper jarred loose of him for a half breath before it crawled on hands and feet for him, mouth wide open, bits of flesh hanging from its jaws.

**

They fought for every inch of ground they gained, earning allies for almost every step. After Dorian, they found a qunari who gruffly introduced himself as Sten before ripping the head off a reaper with his bare hands. A grey warden joined them later, Alistair, the only indication of his affiliation being the griffon on his breastplate covering nothing else but tattered rags.

An elf, Zevran, rescued Dorian from the grasping hands of a reaper half buried under canvas and knocked over tents. His partner or companion Leliana shared some of her arrows with Evelyn who had run empty long ago.

They tore through the narrow passages, winding their way through bodies and filth to the gates only to watch in horror as they shut before them.

“Piss and shit!” A dwarf, Oghren, cursed, his sagging skin pockmarked with sores from malnutrition.

“I’m with him.” Agreed another elf, Sera. If Oghren was more skin than bones, she was more bones than skin, individual ribs visible if she removed her shirt.

By the minute, more died. Eaten by reapers, trampled by fleeing survivors, or bled dry by the weight of their own despair. With the gates closed, there was nowhere to go. Kirkwall faced the water, there were mountains behind it, and the overland route was now choked with hordes of reapers that just kept coming.

The gates stood closed behind them, entreaties to open unanswered. The reapers pressed forward a slow moving wave of flesh consuming anyone living they came across like a horde of locusts on a field of ripe crops.

Cousland whined at his Mistress’s feet and Alphy stood beside her, leaning on his staff, the lyrium runes quiet and dark. He breathed like he had a weight on his chest and rocks in his throat. Evelyn wrapped an arm around him to keep him upright.

Dorain of whatever was left of House Pavus cursed quietly to himself. “Too pretty to die.”

For once, she had no answer, no solution, no thought, no nothing. She couldn’t fly, she barely had the strength to hold her brother upright. The liquid lightning that flooded her at the battle’s beginning drained away. Her knees and hands began to shake with the withdrawal but over the din she heard a voice ring clear.

“Cullen! We need to get to the gate, they'll open it again. For you, they'll open it. Cullen!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Your faves might die. Fyi.


	10. Chapter 10

She moved so fast, Alphy tumbled over, caught at the last minute by Dorian’s arm.

“BB! No! Come back!”

Heedless, she charged forward, “Cousland! Track!”

The mabari charged ahead of her, huntress and hound, honing in on the sound of the screaming voice.

“Cullen! Knight Captain! Knight Captain!”

This Knight Captain would save them, the templars at the gate would open for one of their own. Save him and she’ll save Alphonse.

Reapers were slow, their morbidity lay in their numbers, acting more like a swarm of insects than a pillaging army. Don’t allow them to clump together, they’ll overwhelm you. Don’t allow them to get close, one will snatch you. Run fast, run sure, and you can run through them safely. Sometimes.

Cousland pressed his body to the ground, Mistress crouching with him. Together they ran through a forest of bloody limbs as though on a deer hunt. Branches of grasping hands whipped at them, tearing at her hair and face catching on her armor and clothing before ripping loose again.

Her mabari too suffered deep gouges in his flesh as the reapers slowly turned to catch the feast amidst them but so long as they kept running...

They swerved around pools of reapers, bent to the ground, tearing apart their latest victims. Some were still alive, reaching, screaming as they ran past. “Help me!”

No.

Don’t stop. Don’t slow. Don’t trip. Don’t look back. Don’t hesitate.

The swarm broke open, and the air cleared like passing through a cloud of flies.

A body in armor lay on the ground, a reaper hovering over it, snapping for a face topped with red-stained gold curls. Beyond him a woman with a staff beat back her attackers trying to reach for the body.

“Knight Captain!” She screamed.

“Cousland! Assist!”

The mabari leapt up with a snarl streaking past the Knight Captain for the woman. He tore the limb off a reaper that snagged in her hair, whipped around and lunged for the things legs. Evelyn ran with her whole body into the monster attacking the Knight Captain, knowing she had no strength in her arms to pull it free.

The three of them, reaper, Knight Captain, and Huntress rolled on the ground a mass of limbs and teeth and armor before a foot kicked the reaper free and a mabari tore off its head.

**

Something screamed, something snarled, and something slammed into him with such force the teeth snapping at his cheek tore away at the last possible moment. He was ready to give up, to put his hands down and let the beast feed but the second before surrender, his salvation hit him like the Maker’s Fist come down from the sky.

Seconds after that, hands on his wrists lifted him off the ground bringing him face to face with his deliverer--a woman he’d never seen before in his life.

“Who--?” She yanked on him, her urgency implicit in the violence of her pull.

“Run.”

**

The swarm thickened on the way back. She wasted precious moments beating reapers away to clear the smallest path back to the gate.

She dragged the templar behind her, uncaring if he was injured or bitten or even alive. They don’t have to know he’s dead or dying until after the gate opened. Until after Alphonse was safe.

The mabari and the mage followed closely after them, the mage shouting up to her “To the Gate! To the Gate!”

Still shut, it loomed closer. She wrenched on the Knight Captain’s arm. “Get them to open it! Now!”

“Evelyn!!”

Alphonse screamed for her as they emerged from the horde, reapers tripping after them still trying to grab and tear and eat. The hole they ran through, carved out of the swarm, closed up, sealed with a thick press of bodies that trudged ever forward toward the last living morsels.

She swung the templar toward the gate, pushed him forward. “Open it! Call your soldiers. Open it!”

“Open it Cullen!” The mage implored, turning to see the horde focus single attention on them. They snarled and moaned, they shuffled forward. Leliana’s and Sera’s last arrows did nothing, striking shoulders and chest, their aim too shaken with fear to hit heads or eyes.

Dorian had no magic left in him and Alphonse’s was long gone. Zevran or Sten approaching within range of their blades would be suicide. The reapers would swarm, crash, and overwhelm anyone who ventured too close.

The group swelled in the minutes she’d been gone, survivors fighting through the bodies and the dying to make their last stand at their last hope. There was no where to go but this gate, it had to open. There was no where left, nowhere safe to flee where the passage wasn’t choked with the living dead.

The last survivors pressed their back to the gates, hemmed in by stone on one side and putrid death pressing closer on the other.

“CULLEN GET THEM TO OPEN THE BLOOD FUCKING--”

“They won’t!”

He mistook the brightness in the woman’s eyes for hope, and he blindly followed thinking she had a way out, an escape. Cullen realized too late that brightness was only fear, that _he_ was the salvation _she_ sought.

Again hope died, crushed by closed gate.

“I ordered my men to close the gate. They won’t open it again, Hawke.”

“You didn’t try! Try Cullen! I got people to get back to.”

“Templars!” Cullen called, exhausting the last bits of him. “Templars! On order of Knight Captain Rutherford. Open this gate! Templars!? TEMPLARS!?”

Nothing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Leave a comment if you're moved to. :)


	11. Chapter 11

The survivors began to die, one by one, each in their own little ways.

“Maker if you ever loved your children…” Leliana gasped, prayer slipping from her lips along with tears. Zevran squeezed her hand but kept silent. He had no gods, and he was sure if he started praying now, they wouldn’t listen. Sera cursed and paced--a wild animal cornered-- while Oghren faced down his death with grim silence. 

Sten closed his eyes. “For the Glory of the Qun.” He mumbled. Then waited, his death a forgone conclusion, inevitable like the sunrise and the tide and the might of the Qun.

Dorian didn’t let Alphonse go, figuring the grasp of the man’s hand would be nicely paired with bite of teeth, a sweet counterpoint to accompany his death. Alphonse didn’t seem to mind him--thank the Maker-- didn’t seem to notice how hard he was gripping his hand back.

Something behind Evelyn gagged. A man slit his throat while a pair of women, sisters by the look of them, hugged tight to each other crying softly. Alistair whispered a name “Issa,” fingering a loop of silver on his left hand. He sighed and faced the gate, unable to look death in the eye.

No one reached for her, or called her name. Without thought she reached for the dagger on her hip, thinking the bloodied man behind her had the right idea. 

She would take care of Alphonse first, as she always did, since she was old enough to know he needed it more than she did. She would slit his throat, then her own, and they would suffer no more.

Cousland whined softly, but ever the faithful soldier he kept his body trained on the approaching end. He meant to go down with his teeth in a reaper’s throat.

“Open! Soldiers! Please Open!”

The moans outstripped Hawke and Cullen’s screams at the gates, drowning them out. Not that they weren’t heard. On the other side, templars huddled, shivering, as the screams outside grew louder, the Lieutenant foremost among them.

“He said not to open them.” He didn’t speak aloud or in his defense, just whispered the words to himself as practice for whenever the Maker called him to Judgement and asked him why. “I saved as many as I could. Waited _as long_ as I could! He said not to open them!”

Hawke crumpled, then crawled away from the advancing horde, scrambling in the dirt, pressing herself as close to the gates as she could get. “Daddy please.” She scrunched her eyes shut and tried to remember her father’s face and voice, imagining what he used to say to soothe her nightmares.

They had minutes, moments left.

Cullen should be praying. Trials 1:1 would be appropriate. Trials 1:16 as well. But he had no words for his Maker, instead he turned to the woman that saved him and spent his last words on her.

“It hurts less if you stab quickly.”

Evelyn nodded, understanding.

“Cousland,” Evelyn pointed. “Assist.”

Ears flat against his head, the mabari shot forward like arrow fired from a longbow. He zipped passed Cullen and knocked his full body into the qunari standing near him, buckling the back of his knees.

Sten grunted as he tipped forward, falling just enough to give Evelyn the reach she needed. She jumped and did as was suggested, stabbing quickly, burying her knife in the qunari’s thick neck.

“STEN!”

“NO!”

“WHAT!”

She buried the dagger to the hilt and pushed him forward with all her might, pushing him right into the path of the approaching reapers.

Living flesh, living, bleeding, breathing flesh.

They swarmed him, grasping for the easiest and nearest prey.

Breaking the line just enough, the swarm of reapers parted just a little.

She ran for Alphonse and grabbed him, his wrist slipping in her grasp slick with blood.

“Run! All of you run!”

And like passing thread through a needle’s eye,

They ran.

Sten didn’t have the chance to scream.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Can you tell I've this was what I was waiting for? Don't for a moment think the body count is done.


	12. Chapter 12

The eye of the needle blinked, taking with it the last of the stragglers running for their lives. The eye closed on Sera, the reapers swallowing her whole, a bony arm reaching out from the morass of her death, reaching for another hand of perhaps salvation or comfort and earning only a bite around the wrist.

The thread of survivors passed through, fraying at the ends as another survivor fell, was overcome, and eaten alive screaming. No one knew their name, no one stopped to spare a breath of token protest, or even a glance behind.

The wrist in Evelyn’s hand began to pull away, Alphy weakening in her grasp. So she yanked and pulled, uncaring if she popped bone from socket. A bone could be healed, reset, but a brother could not be restored from chewed flesh.

“A little further Alphy. Come on!”

“Let me go Evelyn!”

Alphonse yanked hard, sliding loose of her slick, bloodied hand.

He ran on his own.

They ran clear of Kirkwall, dodging pockets of reapers still shambling toward the city, the last few drops of the tide that came before. They passed by the destruction that wave wrought, the smoking ruins of carts and wagons, bodies chewed to pieces and reanimated as little more than shreds of flesh attached to a snapping jaw--their brains still whole and hungry.

The mountains thickened.

So did the darkness.

“I can’t...can’t run...anymore!”

“Sten! Maker! Sten.”

“Where do we go now? It’s dark, more will come in the dark!”

Anywhere, somewhere, nowhere, it didn’t matter to Cullen. He chased the wisps of light that sparked in the corners of his vision, bright white pain pricking him with every flash. Every step jarred his bones, his brain sloshing around in his head like water splashing from an overfull bowl.

He’s there, he realized. At the very edge of his sanity before exhaustion and lack of lyrium tipped him into a raving abyss. He stumbled, knees locking up, legs unwilling to carry him another step forward. He crashed into the dirt and when a pair of hands lifted him from it, he said ‘lyrium’ thinking he said ‘thank you.’

Were he not a necessary burden, she’d leave him in that dirt.

“Alphonse. Alphy.” The hands-the bloody hands-called. “Bring your staff here, please.”

Something cool touched his forehead, soft blue light glowed banishing the sparks that stung, restoring his vision.

“The lyrium in my staff can only do so much. He needs it in his body. So do I for that matter.”

“Will this do for now?”

“I don’t know.”

“It’s enough. It’s enough.” Cullen choked, laboring to stand upright but finally, at least, able to stand upright.

The woman with the bloody hands, the murderer, she didn’t let him go, keeping a supportive arm around his waist. While the man with the Maker Sent staff regarded him with a look of venomous pity and her as though he’d never seen her before even though thin threads of resemblance tangled between them both.

“This way!” Hawke cried and everyone followed, too weary to question her sudden assumption of authority.

“Serah,” the second mage called, the one who kept a steady arm at Al...Alphy’s--Cullen recalled as his short term memory rekindled-- back. “Where are you taking us?”

“You really wanna know ‘vint? You’re not gonna like it.”

“No more than I like your ridiculous slur.”

Hawke’s face betrayed a twinge of guilt, “I’m sorry, it’s something a friend of mine would have appreciated. Still, this is the only place I can think of that can get us back into the city, which make no blighted bones about it, we need to be.”

“The suspense is literally killing us.”

The man next to the ‘vint chuckled, swaying a bit before those steady Tevinter hands righted him again.

The Vimmarks opened their hands to the group as they walked, shuffled, crawled, and tripped over bodies for their lives--snow tipped peaks looking like nails sharp enough to scratch the sky. Those hands curled, pressing closer as they walked on until the fist closed in on them, blocking the sky from view, a wide tunnel before them descending deeper into the flesh of the mountains.

“It's a secret, at least it was when I was here last. I hope it still is. But it's the only way I know.” They lit torches from the salvaged and scavenged remains of other travellers. They found some food, a few skins of water but nothing more since tarrying to loot would have given the reapers time to catch up.

“What is this place.” Someone asked.

Hawke sighed yet didn’t answer but the man with the griffon on his breastplate--he did.

“The Deep Roads.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh hey hallo thar. I’m back (for now) enjoy. And have some burgeoning M!Trevelyan x Dorian while you’re at it.


End file.
